Common patterns that cause stuttering

As stuttering is not a simple issue to resolve in most cases, talking about it with that limited of upfront detail would be time consuming and ultimately lead to far too generalized of an answer to be of much help.

Essentially any pattern could be involved with stuttering - some choices would be narrowed by the age of the patient - so possibly more liver wind and/or phlegm obstructions for older patients who start with the issue later in life, heart yin or other shen disturbances for younger patients who start younger. For the most part liver and heart are usually the most involved, but that’s not a given.

It would be easier, unless the entire point of your question is just to explore generalities, to talk about a particular case in detail.

In general, however, it’s not what patterns are involved with stuttering - it’s how to ensure I’m getting the correct pattern decided for the patient. The end result of the imbalance is somewhat irrelevant as it could manifest in a myriad of ways. So working backwards from condition to possible patterns while useful for textbooks and even how we lay some information out here is really not that valid clinically. In other words the near cliche saying of tcm practitioners has validity - treat what you see.

One thing to consider with stuttering however is that there can be physical issues contributing to the problem that don’t necessarily have a direct pattern - so local points can be useful in that regard and there can be emotional traumas or other social/emotional traumas that haven’t really formed or created a deep pattern particularly in younger patients to be all that valid. In other words, Chinese Medicine diagnostic feedback may be somewhat limited particularly, again, in younger patients, so a combination of understanding the issue from a TCM perspective, a neurological perspective, a psycho-emotional perspective and a functional perspective as appropriate on a case by case basis will generally lead to the best results.

Both acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine have shown some effect with stuttering, but as I indicate above proper recommendations will require seeing a qualified acupuncturist to get a diagnosis in Chinese Medicine terms.  In Chinese Medicine (and to some degree in Western Medicine) stuttering is the result of a potential combination of underlying issues that need to be resolved or aided to have any effect on the stuttering.  What these underlying issues are will vary from person to person so treatment must be tailored directly to that individual.  Even with proper tailoring, treatment will often need to be accompanied by speech therapy and/or other types of therapy depending on the background of contributing factors.

A possibly relevant study as an example:

- Determining the effect of laser acupuncture in treating stutterers in comparison with speech therapy